Fall Protection - Truck Trailers
Is fall protection required? If so, what measures do you have in place? We unload trucks daily and have to go on the trailer in order to strap up the material to unload.
Comments (15)
I'm assuming this is a flatbed trailer/low boy? If it's 4 feet above the ground, then yes, fall protection is technically required. To be honest, I've only seen a few companies enforce it (not saying it's right not to), but the ones that did used a mobile anchor point, such as the Mobile Grabber from Malta Dynamics.
I agree with what Drew is saying. If a human is 4' or more in the air there must be fall protection in place.
At my former employer we unloaded steel from flatbed trucks for machining into hydraulic couplings. Most of it was in 12' hex or round bars. round, hex, or square in bundles. We used a 10-ton overhead bridge crane. Our people would use a big set of stairs at the end of the trailer to get up on the flat bed to unload. I struggled for 5 years to come up with methods of fall protection while our employees were on the flatbeds. Most of the ideas mentioned below I had quoted but management would not spend the money! Admittedly, they were all expensive.
Finally, I solved the problem for me, I retired! Five years later and they still have not done anything about it, issue is now 10 years old!
A client of mine has an overhead setup like this. Any reason that wouldn’t work?
Yup fall protection is required.
At a previous job, we used an I-beam rolling anchor and a sealed SRL with a tagline so whoever unloads can pull the SRL down and hook up.
We also used a choker on a pipe that was run thru 7 roof struts (our in-house engineer did the math and said this would adequately distribute the load).
Saferack is a company that makes mobile guardrails like their Maui system that can be used on multiple sizes/heights of trucks. Might be worth looking into that. Then there would not be any fall protection training, PPE, etc.
Fall protection is needed. I think Amanda’s portable gantry method or something like this should address most situations:
https://sps.honeywell.com/us/en/products/safety/fall-protection/anchorage-connectors/miller-skyorb-overhead-rotational-boom-anchor
We offload tankers and need to open a vent on top of the tanker to prevent vacuum implosion. We require our supplier to only deliver in tankers where the vent can be opened from the ground.